Clamping mechanisms are used in a wide variety of applications to clamp two or more work pieces together during various types of manufacturing and assembly operations. One such clamp is often used in the assembly of various components used in commercial and military aircrafts. For example, the construction of interior panels used in commercial aircraft often requires the use of a plurality of clamps to hold two or more panels together during an assembly or manufacturing operation. The clamps often have to be taken off and then placed on work pieces a number of times during the construction process. Thus, with conventional clamps a significant degree of physical effort is often expended by workers simply placing numbers of clamps on to work pieces, and then being required to remove the clamps from the work pieces, then repeating this operation a number of times. The physical effort required to place and remove clamps from the work piece also can add to the overall manufacturing time.
One clamp developed to overcome the above drawbacks is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,832,416, assigned to the Boeing Company. These clamps make use of a living hinge and a camming number that allows the clamp to be quickly and easily attached to an edge of one or more work pieces with a minimal degree of physical effort by the user.
Nevertheless, it would further be highly desirable to provide a spring clamp that can be opened quickly and easily by the user and placed over the edges of one or more work pieces with a minimal degree of physical effort by the user, and can further accommodate work pieces of significantly varying thicknesses.